EVENING. Health.

Fda To Go After Bad Fish

April 13, 1993|By Paul Hemp, Boston Globe.

As the nation reacted with outrage to the deaths of two children from contaminated Jack in the Box hamburgers earlier this year, a little-publicized report appeared in Florida: Nine people died there last year from eating raw oysters.

Consumer activists cited the report as yet another sign of the seafood industry's inadequate regulation. Whereas flaws in the U.S. meat inspection system may have allowed the tainted Jack in the Box hamburger to slip through, they said, the seafood industry lacks a comprehensive mandatory federal inspection program altogether.

"People are playing roulette when they order seafood," says Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, a consumer lobbying group in Washington.

Yet, in one of the numerous ironies and complexities that riddle the debate about seafood regulation, Florida officials say that in fact no surveillance, however comprehensive, could have screened out the tainted oysters.

"I'm afraid there is no available inspection method that can keep oysters such as these off the market," says Gary Hlady, deputy state epidemiologist in Florida's Health Department.

So goes the debate, with critics saying the industry is woefully underpoliced, the industry accusing critics of irresponsible scare tactics, and the consumer left wondering whom to believe.

Now the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the industry, has said he plans to impose tough new quality-control requirements on seafood from the moment it is caught to the time a consumer buys it and takes it home.

"The history of food safety regulation is filled with government watchdogs chasing the horses after they've left the barn," FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler said in a speech last month at a conference co-sponsored by Public Voice. "What we need is a system that is built on preventing problems in the food supply," including seafood.

Unlike meat or poultry, with which a federal inspector visually inspects each carcass, fish currently is inspected only sporadically. Despite stepping up its seafood inspection program after additional congressional funding two years ago, the FDA inspects a processing plant, at best, once a year, up from once every four years several years ago.

(In some cases, a processor will hire a full-time inspector in order to have the seafood stamped Grade A, but the practice is voluntary, and the inspector checks more for appearance than for pathogens.)

The continuous visual inspection used in the meat industry, however, would be of little use in identifying the chemicals or micro-organisms in dangerously contaminated fish, say industry and FDA officials.

So Kessler, the FDA commissioner, has proposed a system that would mandate comprehensive quality control as seafood makes its way from the water to the table.

"We want to make sure plants are preventing risks from occurring," says Thomas Billy, head of the FDA's Office of Seafood. "That's better than trying to chase down a product in the marketplace."

Still, monitoring each stage of the processing won't be easy. Seafood, unlike beef and poultry, normally isn't raised in a controlled environment and, in its wild environment, it can be exposed to environmental hazards ranging from bacteria to chemical pollutants.

Also unlike the beef and poultry industries, the seafood industry is decentralized, with thousands of small businesses and facilities, including boats that process fish on the high seas.

But, whatever its drawbacks, the FDA's proposal has officially been welcomed by the seafood industry, where some producers already use the system. "It's something we subscribe to totally," says Lee Weddig, executive vice president of the National Fisheries Institute, an industry association.

Meanwhile, the debate about just how dangerous seafood is continues. For example, each of the nine people in Florida who died from raw oysters apparently suffered from liver disease, which made them susceptible to vibrio vulnificus, a natural saltwater bacterium found occasionally in oysters, Florida officials say.

Whatever differences of interpretation, says DeWaal of Public Voice, one thing is clear: "Seafood is the cause of many illnesses and deaths, and many could be prevented through better regulations."